A+E Interactive

Michael Wilson doesn’t really have orange hair, and he wears glasses. But his avatar has no shades and he does have orange hair. That’s the way the CEO of Makena Technologies likes to look inside the his virtual world, There.com. He showed me the avatar on a recent visit to the Merc, where he revealed the terms of a new agreement.
Makena Technologies  is announcing today that it has cut a deal with Capitol Music Group to bring music artists into the There.com virtual world.

The Laguna Beach-based company that brought to life Virtual Laguna Beach, Virtual Pimp My Ride and Virtual Hills is building a nightclub environment in There.com where fans can meet and talk with musicians, including bands such as Yellowcard, Korn, the Beastie Boys, and Lily Allen.

Basically the company will create a warehouse-like virtual nightclub that has a video wall on one side where you can watch actual videos of the bands.  And if you pay for the privilege, you can go upstairs into the VIP area where you can chat with the bands on couches.
There.com has had a winding history. I wrote one of the first stories about it when it debuted as a company in 2001. There.com launched it 2003, but the company tanked during the dotcom bust and the investors took it over. They renamed it Fortera and focused There’s virtual world technologies on building military simulations. Then, in 2005, the consumer side of the company spun out as Makena Technologies. There.com continued to thrive and it now has more than 1 million members. That makes it smaller than Linden Lab’s Second Life, but starting last year Makena struck its successful relationship with MTV, which hired the company to create sponsored worlds such as Virtual Laguna Beach where fans could hang out with the cast of the MTV TV show. Wilson, a former eBay executive, became CEO in . Full told, the company has invested $50 million in its virtual world technology.

Now the company is moving further into sponsored environments with the Capital Music Group deal. In the nightclubs, no more than 50 or so people can fit into the place at one time. But the company replicates the nightclubs over and over so that it can accommodate lots of fans. Then the band members rotate through the nightclubs, holding conversations with the fans. The band members use avatars, or virtual characters, which resemble themselves.

“It’s an opportunity to promote the bands with fans who can have an actual conversation with them,” said Ben Richardson, vice president of business development at Makena.
Wilson says that There.com differs from Second Life in that  it allows for fans to create objects in the world, but the There.com acts as a gatekeeper on the content. In that way, Wilson says that the company can protect established brands inside its worlds. Thus, he says, the sponsors like it.

“Ours is a social, virtual world that appeals to all ages,” Wilson says, nothing that half the users are female and 70 percent are 13 years to 26 years old. The average age is 22.
Despite the tight control on created objects, Wilson says that users are submitting thousands of items. There are more than 20,000 different kinds of clothing items in the world. You can buy items with a virtual currency, dubbed the ThereBuck. About $1,800 ThereBucks equals a real dollar. The company makes money as users buy more currency to buy things. Why is Second Life bigger?

 “They had PR,” Wilson says. (They also didn’t collapse with their original business; There.com had a near-death experience and was only revived by the investor team).
Like Second Life, There.com is free.  But it does charge $4.95 a month for premium service, which includes voice communication over the Internet.